Personal Notes 



AND 



Reminiscences of Lincoln 



^«.<o. H. S. 



HUIDEKOPER 



CA'-. 



\ 



PHILA.UELPHIA 

BicKivG Print, S.E. Cor. Tenth and Market 

1896 



Personal Notes 



AND 



Reminiscences of Lincoln 



H. S. HUIDEKOPER 



PHILADEI.rillA 

HicKiNG Print, S.E. Cor. Tkntm and Market 

1896 



AS 



PREFACE. 



Everyone who lived during war times owes to posterity 
and to history a narrative of what he saw or heard in that 
eventful period, and with that thought, the following lines 
record some matters with which the writer was especially 
connected. 

The allusions to family, or to events which occurred 
previous to the war, must be considered to be written only 
for my relatives, more particularly for the younger members 
of the family, although the facts may not be without in- 
terest to some friends, and may serve to while away the 
leisure half-hour of some comrade, who will thus have, at 
his own hearth, as it were, for a camp-fire, a soldier's short 
story of some of the things which happened a third of a 

century ago. 

H. S. HUIDEKOPER. 

Philadelphia, Pa., December, 1896, 



>ttt 
UJa '09 



PERSONAL NOTES AND REMINISCENCES 
OF LINCOLN. 



When at Harvard College, from 1858 to 1862, I had 
strong anti-slavery feelings and was a Republican, although 
unable to vote, as election days in Meadville, Pennsylvania, 
where I lived, occurred during term time, and in those former 
days punctuality in attendance was so necessary that a stu- 
dent could not be absent for a week without being missed 
and called to account. 

As a boy, I had been interested in the political parties 
to which my father belonged, and had seen and shaken hands 
with General Zachary Taylor, Giddings, Carter, John A. 
Bingham, Judge Sherman, Senator Wade, Tom Corwin, and 
other prominent men of that period, for my father was fond 
of having such men, when they came to Meadville in political 
campaigns, stay with him, or at least dine at his table. 

About a century ago, the then agent of the Holland 
Land Company in Northwestern Pennsylvania resigned his 
position, annoyed by the threats and demonstrations of the 
squatters on their lands, and my grandfather, a very young 
man and only a few years from Holland, was sent from 
Philadelphia to Meadville to take his place in managing the 
large affairs of the company. He lived to be over seventy- 
eight, and was vigorous enough, up to the last, to be able to 
shoot woodcocks on the wing, a sport he keenly enjoyed. 

When a boy, for the purpose of instruction, I was often 
called in from my play, and always for two full weeks in 
January, taken into the office of my grandfather to help 
him calculate the interest due on contracts, to copy letters, 
which was then done with a quill pen, or to record the num- 
bers, letters and dates-of-issue of the bank bills of those 



days received by the office. It was there I first heard the 
name of John Brown, although later I heard from my 
father, who passed John Brown's door four times a year on 
his way to Warren, Pa., and often called upon him, much 
about the peculiarities of the man and many incidents of 
his life, among them that he had been refused membership 
of the Church in Meadville, because he had attempted to 
have a negro admitted at the same time, and that he had 
been married there to a Miss Annie Day. 

From a different standpoint I had heard praises of 
James Buchanan, in whose administration John Brown met 
his doom, who was described by my maternal grandmother 
as a most elegant, courtly gentleman, he having resided 
near her in Lancaster County, and officiated as groomsman 
at her marriage to Judge Shippen, under whom, as captain 
in the war of 1812, Buchanan served as an enlisted cavalry- 
man. My grandmother talked more about Buchanan than 
she did about another gentleman of great military ability, 
who was a friend and guest of the Philadelphia branch of the 
family in Revolutionary times, and who married the Tory 
beauty Peggy Shippen, whose portrait that versatile officer. 
Major Andre, sketched, and to whom he wrote verses during 
the winter that Howe had possession of the Quaker City 
and reveled in luxury, while Washington's men were suffer- 
ing at Valley Forge. 

Meadville, although not then settled, was on the route 
between Presque Isle and Fort Duquesne, with Fort Le- 
Boeuf above it and Fort Venango below, and Washington 
and Armstrong and Duquesne, and the French troops with 
their Indian allies, passed and repassed the site of the future 
town in their movements in pre-Revolutionary times. One 
century later it was still a highway, over which squads of 
human beings of another color, escaping from the operations 
of the Fugitive Slave Law, followed each other for weeks 
on their way to Canada and freedom. The road passed our 
grounds, and many an hour did I hold on to my grandfather's 
hand as he walked up and down the road in front of his 



5 

house, I not then knowing why he pressed silver money 
into the hands of these refugees, and thus showed them 
that the whole world was not against them. 

I had thus become interested in politics in a general 
way, had seen the Whig party go down, and had watched 
the rise of the Republican party and its ineffectual efforts 
to develop under Fremont, in the campaign of 1856. The 
campaign was an enthusiastic one, but there was something 
wanting — the keynote had not been struck. 

Later I heard Wendell Phillips deliver his funeral ora- 
tion on John Brown, in Boston Music Hall ; and Caleb 
Gushing, from Faneuil Hall, plead to the North for law and 
order, — an unnecessary appeal, for Massachusetts and her 
sister States above " the line " never did, and never meant 
to, forget their duty to their country. 

Alive to the issues of that period and interested in all 
public matters, on February 28, i860, I read the morning 
paper, as was my custom before beginning my studies, and 
the great speech made the night before at the Cooper Insti- 
tute, which, in one day, raised a local Illinois politician to 
the head of the Republican party. Turning from my win- 
dow seat in Hollis Hall to my brother, who was my room- 
mate and classmate, I remarked that I had never before that 
moment heard of Abraham Lincoln, but that there was in 
his words just what the North had been yearning for, and 
that that speech would make him the next President of the 
United States. The doctrine he taught, — Lincoln's yfrj/ mis- 
sion, as it were, — that a " house divided against itself could 
not stand, and that this government could not exist with 
one-half slave and the other half free, that it would become 
all slave or all free," — touched a responsive chord in every 
patriotic heart, — the keynote had been sounded, and the 
Republican party was electrified into a great political power, 

Robert Lincoln entered Harvard College in i860, and 
was a sturdy, whole-souled, modest fellow, of strong affec- 
tions and friendships, and to his closer friends he was with- 
out reserve and delightfully entertaining. It was my good 



s^ 



fortune to count myself as one of these, due largely to his 
special intimacy with my younger brother, of Lincoln's 
class, who died soon after the war from disease contracted 
in Texas, where he was with Sheridan's army until it was 
recalled from watching Maximilian's forces, then over the 
line in Mexico. 

During freshman year Robert Lincoln boarded at a 
private house, which brought him, to some degree, in ac- 
quaintance with the town-folk of Cambridge, one of whom 
desired to be postmaster under the new regime. He suc- 
ceeded in interesting Bob (as many of us affectionately 
called him) in his efforts to obtain the position, and probably 



Xi^^ young Lincoln's first real political work was to write to his 
father in this man's behalf. With the promptness which 
characterized Mr. Lincoln, he replied somewhat in these 
words, — 

" If you do not attend 4o your studies and let matters such 
you write about alone, I will take you away from college." 

" Bob " carried this letter in his pocket, and on many 
an occasion afterward, when other aspirants for office im- 
portuned him for assistance, it served him a good turn. 

In April, 1861, when the first call for troops was made, 
Harvard men responded promptly, and among those who 
obtained commissions and in time commanded regiments, 
brigades or divisions, were Wadsworth, Barlow, Vincent, 
Bartlett, Forbes, Devens, Palfrey, Revere, Lowell, Quincy, 
Sherwin, Abbot, Weld, Russell, Crowninshield and Holmes, 
all of whom, had life and time permitted, would, with their 
ability, have been promoted to higher commands. Equally 
good and patriotic men to the number of six hundred Har- 
vard graduates took part in the war before its close. 

Anxious to do my part, but m the branch of the service 
to which I was inclined, I sought enlistment in Nimms' 
Boston Artillery Company, but the fullness of the company 
and my father's admonition that my services would be more 
needed later on than then, sent me back to the books I had 



thrown aside, and I increased my library by the purchase 
of Hardee's Tactics, DeHart on Courts-Martial, and a musket. 
The lawns of Harvard College became drill grounds. Officers 
of the Cadet Corps of Boston took charge of the United 
States Arsenal, with undergraduates for enlisted men. A 
competent French drill-master, named Salignac, under whom 
General Miles took his first military lessons, had his school, 
and between recitations in physic and astronomy, Professor 

took a hand at military instruction with more spirit 

than would be evinced by the command he once gave : 
•• G-e-n-t-1-e-m-e n, you will please A-D-V-A-N-C-E ! " In 
the bayonet exercise. Ward of '62 was instructor, and most 
competent he was. 

I left college before commencement, called to the bed- 
side of my sick father, who died in less than a week after I 
reached Washington with my regiment, of which I was then 
the lieutenant-colonel. I, however, had had his blessing, 
and having selfishly " detailed " my classmate brother (who 
was a year younger than I, and equally anxious to go to 
the front) to remain at home and look after the other six 
children and the estate, I felt that I was prepared to devote 
myself to the work I had undertaken. 

On September 6th, 1862, the regiment ( which I com- 
manded for the first two weeks after its organization) reached 
Washington from Harrisburg. and after marching northward 
for a few miles, towards McClellan's army on its way to An- 
tietam, and back again to Washington, was given guard duty 
to perform. It fell to Companies D and K to be sent to 
the Soldiers' Home, two miles north of Washington, where 
President Lincoln spent the summer, and where it was 
thought necessary he should have military protection. 
Company K had been my own company, although I think 
I had not been mustered as its captain because of my ap- 
pointment as a field officer on my arrival at Harrisburg. I. 
had, however, a special interest in it, and while we lay in 
Washington I visited it more frequently than I did any 
other of the ten companies. 



I 



The captain of Company K was a middle-aged man, 
who weighed probably two hundred and twenty-five pounds. 
He was faithful in church matters, and had had some success 
in politics about the time they began to take their place in 
Pennsylvania as a high art. Being of pleasant address, he 
soon found favor with the President, and was required to 
breakfast with him every morning and accompany him oc- 
casionally, in his carriage, to the White House. Derickson 
says the President was an early riser, and that they often had 
a half hour's talk before their seven o'clock breakfast. It 
was probably on one of these occasions that the President 
gave the following letter, which the captain made good use 
of some months later, as will appear : 

" Executive Mansion, 

" Washington, Nov. i, 1862. 

" to whom it may concern : — 

" Capt. Derickson, with his company, has been, for sometime, 
keeping guard at my residence, now at the Soldiers' Retreat. He 
and his company are very agreeable to me, and while it is deemed 
proper for any guard to remain, none would be more satisfactory to 
me than Capt. D. and his Company. 

"A. Lincoln." 

In a day or two after the two companies reached the 
Soldiers' Home, I was presented by Captain Derickson to 
the President, and my youthfulness and small stature must 
have struck the good man, for he at once remarked, " Well, 
I expected to see a very tall man, weighing three hundred 
pounds, in the lieutenant-colonel, and the difference in the 
size and rank of you two reminds me of a story. You know 
that Douglas was a short man. When he was to speak the 
people always collected from far and near, and on occasion 
of one of his appointments a seven-foot Illinois giant came in 
town to hear him. As this giant was wending his way along 
to the public square, another man threw himself on his 
knees in front of him and, putting his arms about his legs, 
said he was very glad to see him, for he had heard so much 



about him, and had admired him for so long. The giant 
asked what this all meant, and said there was a mistake 
somewhere, to which the other replied, • Oh, no ; surely you 
are Douglas, for they say he is the biggest man in Illinois, 
and no one can be bigger than you.' " We were standing 
on the front porch on this occasion, and after talking about 
other things, Mr. Lincoln laid his huge hand on my shoulder, 
and, in the most serious manner, said, ♦' Will you answer me 
a question which I asked the captain, and which he said he 
could not answer ? " I replied in some cautious way, and 
he then said, " When the captain told me about your family 
and its Dutch origin, I asked where the difference lay 
between an Amster-^2iVi\ Dutchman and any other damn 
Dutchman ? " It was thus I first met the greatest man of 
the age. I was constantly about him afterwards, and his 
manner was always so easy, so simple, and so friendly that | 
I had no hesitation in going into his office, or in passing ^ 

through the White House to the camp of the two compan- i 

ies, which followed the President to the city when he gave •« 

up his summer abode, and when I dropped into his room or \ 

met him he always had a pleasant word of greeting for me. f 

It was while our men were at the Soldiers' Home, in 
September, 1862, that the second battle of Bull Run was 
lost, after which disaster the American people, with Lincoln 
as their mouthpiece, reappointed McClellan to the com- 
mand of the army. In our conversation on one occasion, 
alter the battle of Antietam had been fought and won by 
McClellan with the recently demoralized army, the Presi- 
dent exhibited some uneasiness as to what would be the 
result of the pursuit of the rebel army, and I asked him 
plainly what the plans were, and whether there was to 
be another battle. He answered that he was really dis- 
heartened, for he had been urging the general to another 
blow, but only to be answered, one time that his horses 
were fatigued, and another time that he had too few troops. 
In a couple of weeks after this General McClellan was re- 
lieved of the command ol the Army of th? Potomac. 



\ 

I 
I 



lO 

On Saturday, February the 14th, 1863, the regiment 
was ordered to report the next morning at Seventh Street 
Wharf for transportation to Acquia Creek, to join the 
Army of the Potomac. In getting the companies ready 
for the movement, we discovered that it had been arranged 
that Company K should remain at the White House, and, 
as we were anxious to go into the field with the full regi- 
ment of ten companies, I was sent to see the President to 
learn whether the retention of the hundred men was by his 
wish, or because of some unwillingness on the part of the 
officers to leave him for others to guard. 

My call was made early Sunday morning, before Mr. 
Lincoln had come down stairs, and, of course, without my 
knowledge of the existence of the " to whom it may con- 
cern " letter above given. Unfortunately for my mission, 
the President came down with his young son Tad holding 
onto his hand, who was entreating him that Company K. 
might not be allowed to leave them. As we talked the 
situation over, little Tad sat on his father's knee, and while 
Mr. Lincoln was writing a short note for me to carry to 
General Heintzleman, I could not feel otherwise than that 
the boy's interest in the company would have much to do 
with its remaining in Washington until its muster out, which 
occurred three years later. 

The note, which the President read to me before en- 
I closing it, began by stating that he was unwilling that ablc- 
I bodied men should be kept on duty at the White House 
when there was so much need of them in the field, and that 
, he had often so stated when the question was under discus- 
], sion. Tad havmg burst into tears while the President was 
^ writing, and sobbed until his father had to stop his work 
?* and comfort him, the letter wound up with the damaging 
I clause that Company K was composed of men of such 
^ excellent habits and good deportment, as to make it agree- 
able to them all to have it remain, provided the Department 
Commander thought its retention in Washington, as his 
guard, advisable. 



II 

Considering the question one of little concern to the 
President himself, and that he would really prefer to have 
soldiers who had been disabled in the field (the Invalid 
Corps) furnish the necessary guard, I hastened to General 
Heintzleman's assistant adjutant-general — " Big Johnson" 
we called him — to get him to issue the desired order to the 
company. Johnson, however, said the communication was 
too much a personal one for him to act on without refer- 
ring it to his chief, and when the general came in, later in 
the morning, he emphatically said, " No, sir," in the pecuhar 
nasal voice he had, which so many soldiers remember, and 
which I shall never forget. 

Several men of Company K made application for serv- 
ice with the regiment, and were taken with us to the front, 
where they performed duty as clerk, wagon master, etc. 

While we lay at Belle Plain, Va., one of the enlisted 
men of the regiment, who had probably concealed from the 
recruiting officer the fact of his being under age, wrote a 
most pathetic letter to the President, appealing to his 
" humanity, " to his " fondness for the soldier," and to his 
"sense of justice " to see that he should be discharged from 
the service and allowed to return to his widowed mother, 
who needed his support. The communication made some 
pretense to penmanship, and the words " To the President " 
formed an arc over the top, with each letter embellished. 
The postscript, in a hopeful strain, stated that there were 
many more such slowly-dying boys in the regiment, all of 
whom ought to have their discharge. Mr. Lincoln sent the 
letter through the military channels to our regimental head- 
quarters, first noting on it, in a humorous strain, something 
about some officers being so inconsiderate as not to let 
men go home when they wished to. The man recovered 
and became one of the best of soldiers, but did not get 
home until after he was wounded in the Wilderness. 

Having somewhat recovered, by October, from wounds 
received on July ist, 1863, at Gettysburg, I called upon the 
President, who kindly asked what he could do for me. I 



12 

answered that I was on my way to the War Department, to 
ask for Hght duty in Philadelphia for a month or two, until 
I should be strong enough to return to the regiment, 
that my papers were in good shape, and that no influence, 
beyond a letter I had from General Doubleday, was required. 
He, however, said, " Oh, let me fix that," and wrote the 
following : 

"Executive Mansion, 

Washington, October 23d, 1863. 
"To THE Adjutant-General: 

," Please grant such request as Col. Huidekoper may make. 

" A. Lincoln." 

I carried the letter to Colonel Hardee, who asked me 
what I wanted. ' He was much surprised at the common- 
place character of my request, and remarked that a 
carte-blanche order like that had never come from the 
President to the War Department before. Hardee then 
urged me to ask for a commission as brigadier-general, and 
said they would send me to Maine, where an officer of rank 
was required, and where I could remain until the end of the 
war. To my answer that it would not be fair to the Presi- 
dent to thus abuse his confidence, he replied that it would 
probably gratify Mr. Lincoln to have me thus provided for. 
The post was su"bsequently filled by a general officer of 
good fighting qualities whom I had served under, but who 
had been relieved from active service after Gettysburg and 
assigned to duty at Portland, Maine. 

It had so happened that Tad Lincoln, whom the men 
of Company K had provided with a uniform, colonel's 
shoulder straps, and a hat marked «' 150 P. V.," followed me 
from the camp of his company to Hardee's office. When 
he heard me give the designation of my command to the 
clerk, he cracked the whip he held in his hand and said, 
"No, sir; I am colonel of the 150th." 



13 

In the early spring of 1864, my brother, Herman, who 
was to graduate at Harvard that year, appeared before the 
Casey Board in Washington for a commission in the U. S. 
Colored Troops, in competition with hundreds of officers 
and private soldiers who were then in the field and thus 
sought promotion. The Board placed his name on the list 
for a captaincy. Anxious to put him in the line of promo- 
tion at not too late a day, one of his friends, Judge Pettis, of 
Meadville, promptly made application for a commission 
which would make him the senior captain of one of the new 
regiments. 

Knowing the President intimately, the judge carried the 
paper to Mr. Lincoln, who endorsed it as follows: 

" I know nothing of the young man within named, except by 
hearsay, which is all in his favor. His brother, Lt.-Col. Huide- 
koper, who lost an arm at Gettysburg, I do know, and for his 
sake I would be very glad for the advancement of the young man. 

"A. Lincoln. 

"April 27, 1864." 

Through this favor on part of Mr. Lincoln, it fell to the 
lot of Captain Huidekoper, not yet of age, to organize, equip, 
and to drill for several weeks, with colored sergeants as com- 
pany commanders, the One Hundred and Twenty-seventh 
Regiment U. S. C. T. He received, the following March, 
after a winter's service in front of Richmond, promotion 
by a commission as major in the Twenty-ninth Regiment 

U. S. C. T. 

Herman possessed soldierly ability, and though modest 
in demeanor, had force of character and was not unequal 
to the care of one thousand negro recruits at Camp Penn — 
an unusual task for a boy just past twenty. 

In August, 1864, a man named Wilson, with whom I 
had gone to school in my younger days, and who had been 
in the rebel army, returned to Meadville and stated that the 
majority of his associates in the military prison at Rock 
Island, where he had been confined after his capture by our 



14 

troops, were tired of fighting the United States, and so were 
averse to their exchange and return to the South. It oc- 
curred to Judge Pettis that these men might be used by the 
government to advantage against the Indians, who had 
recently invaded Minnesota and massacred the inhabitants, 
thereby causing a numerous force of soldiers then under 
command of General Sibley, to be kept on the frontier. He 
talked to me about the scheme, and I encouraged him in 
seeing what could be done in the matter. For this purpose 
he went to Washington, and soon interested Mr. Lincoln in 
his proposition. Mr. Lincoln asked Pettis whether he had 
discussed the question of the employment of released pris- 
oners with me, and having been answered in the affirmative, 
he said he would like to talk to me about it.and, if I assured 
him that the plan was feasible, he would issue the necessary 
orders to carry the measure into effect. 

Judge Pettis telegraphed to me to come to Washington, 
and on the last day of August met me at the station and 
drove with me to the Soldiers' Home, where the President 
was then spending the summer. 

When we arrived Mr. Lincoln was at dinner, but he 
soon came into the parlor and, stretching nis long body on 
the fofa-lounge started a general conversation. During the 
call a carriage drove to the door, and when the servant 
brought the card m Mr. Lincoln directed her to say that he 
was engaged for the evening. In answer to that message, 
the caller sent word that he must see the President. Mr. 
Lincoln told the servant to say that he could not see him. 
The servant came back the third time and said the man 
would remain outside and await the convenience of the 
President. Mr. Lincoln hastily said, " Tell the man I will 
not see him." As the wheels rumbled down the roadway, 
Mr. Lincoln gave a short laugh of relief, and remarked, 
'* That is a most persistent man. As an officer he was dis- J^ 
missed from the army, and now wishes me to reinstate him, 
so as to relieve him from the imputation of ' conduct unbe- 
coming an officer and a gentleman. ' " Mr. Lincoln added 



15 

that the man was related to a former political antagonist of 
his, mentioning names, for which reason he would like to 
befriend him, but discipline in the army required that he 
should not listen to all grievances brought to his door. 

After a half-hour Mr. Lincoln turned to me and said, 
" Pettis has been talking to me about making use of the 
rebel prisoners at Rock Island, and I wish you would call at 
the White House exactly at nine to-morrow morning, that I 
may talk the matter over with you." 

At the appointed time the following morning, we, Mr. 
Lincoln and I, only, met as he stepped from his carriage, 
and taking hold of my arm he led me to an ante-room in 
the War Department building, and sitting down on a bench, 
said, " Tell me what you think of Pettis's suggestion about 
enlisting rebel prisoners-of-war." 

In enumerating the possible advantages in the use of 
these men, I said that the draft was pressing hard upon 
families where the men could not easily be spared, and that 
where money could be raised to hire substitutes, the market 
price for which was $[,ooo,each, rough, worthless men, gen- 
erally foreigners, were secured. I also stated that it took 
one year to make a good soldier out of a recruit, and that 
the cost to the government in pay, rations and clothing, 
during training, was not a small sum, and that if a brigade 
of seasoned, efficient troops could be relieved from watching 
the Indians, it was worth trying to do so with reconstructed 
rebel soldiers, who could be made ready for the field almost 
at once. 

The question of there being many who would thus en- 
list was discussed, and also whether they would remain in 
our service. I said I had confidence in Wilson's statement, 
but of course it would be better if the men could be stationed 
where desertion would endanger their scalps. I said, further, 
that the plan was to give these men a bounty of ^lOO each, 
which the drafted men in the Crawford County district would 
gladly pay to them as substitutes. 




-A 



Y: ^Os LxJ»^'<^^^'^^^ ^' 



i6 

The President then left me and went into a private 
office, where it took him some time to draft an order. On 
his return he read to me what he had written, and seeing 
that he had brought me into the business, which I had not 
wished or intended, I suggested some changes in the word- 
ing of the paper, particularly in the clause that referred to 
the bounty-money the men were to receive. The President 
made, without hesitation, the alterations I suggested, and I 
then accepted the responsibility of the novel scheme, the 
details of which were left, almost entirely, to Judge Pettis. 

The order read as follows : 

" Executive Mansion, 

"Washington, D. C, September i, 1864. 

" It is represented to me that there are at Rock Island, III., as 
rebel prisoners of war, many persons of northern and foreign birth, 
who are unwilling to be exchanged and sent south, but who wish to 
take the oath of allegiance and enter the military service of the Union. 
Colonel Huidekoper, on behalf of the people of some parts of Penn- 
sylvania, wishes to pay the bounties the Government would have to 
pay to proper persons of this class, have them enter the service of 
the United States and be credited to the localities furnishing the 
bounty money. He will, therefore, proceed to Rock Island, ascer- 
tain the names of such persons (not including any who have 
attractions southward), and telegraph them to the provost marshal 
here, whereupon direction will be given to discharge the persons 
named upon their taking the oath of allegiance, and when they shall 
have been duly received and mustered into the service of the United 
States, their number will be credited as may be directed by Colonel 
Huidekoper. 

"Abraham Lincoln." 

The President then said, " Now we will take this into 
the Secretary of War's office, and I wish you to notice how 
they treat me in there. They do not think I know anything 
in their line of business, or should ever give them any 
direction concerning it." 

The President seemed to know where to go, for he went 
straight to the desk of Provost-Marshal-General Fry and 
told him what he had done, and asked to have the matter 



17 

attended to, according to the intent of the paper. General 
Fry remonstrated vigorously, telling the President that Mr. 
Stanton had considered the question some time before and 
had decided against the measure, and that he (the President), 
must withdraw the order. As we left the room, Mr. Lincoln 
remarked upon the want of deference shown him, evincing 
some amusement at the opposition. 

The continued objection made by the Department to 
the plan required, three weeks later, Mr. Lincoln's interfer- 
ence, and he endorsed the following on the original paper : 

" The bearer will present the list of names contemplated within. 
The provost-marshal-general will please take the proper steps to 
have them examined, mustered in and discharged from prison, so as 
to be properly credited ; all according to the within. 

"A. Lincoln. 
"September 20, 1864." 

This he himself carried to Mr. Stanton's office. 

General Fry described the scene which occurred on this 
occasion, in an article he wrote, entitled " Lincoln at his 
best," in these words: 

« * * * But the Secretary of War refused to have the credits 
allowed. * * * Then Lincoln went in person to Stanton's 
office, and I was called there by the latter to state the facts in the 
case. I reported to the two high officials, as I had previously done 
to the Secretary alone, that these men belonged to the United 
States, being prisoners of war; that they could not be used against 
the Confederates; that they had no relation whatever to the county 
to which it was proposed they should be credited ; that all that was 
necessary toward enlisting them in our army for Indian service was 
the Government's release of them as prisoners of war ; that to give 
them bounty and credit them to a county which owed some of its 
own men for service against the Confederates would waste money, 
and deprive the army operating against a powerful enemy of that 
number of men, etc. 

" Stanton said : ' Now, Mr. President, those are the facts, and 
you must see that your order cannot be executed.' 

" Lincoln sat upon a sofa with his legs crossed, and did not say 
a word until the Secretary's last remark. Then he said in a some- 
what positive tone : " Mr, Secretary, I reckon you will have to exe- 
cute the order.' 



I« 

"Stanton replied, with asperity: 'Mr. President, I cannot do 
it. The order is an improper one, and I cannot execute it.' 

" Lincoln fixed his eye upon Stanton, and in a firm voice and 
with an accent that clearly showed determination, he said : « Mr. 
Secretary, it will have to be done.' 

"Stanton then realized that he was overmatched. He had 
made a square issue with the President and he had been defeated, 
notwithstanding the fact that he was in the right. Upon an intima- 
tion from him I withdrew, and I did not witness a surrender. A 
few minutes after I reached my office I received instructions from 
the Secretary to carry's out the President's order. 

" Stanton never mentioned the subject to me afterwards, nor 
did I ever ascertain the special and, no doubt, sufficient reasons 
which the President had for his action in this case." 

Nothing can more clearly illustrate Mr. Lincoln's con- 
trol over the members of his cabinet, or his mastership of 
the affairs of their offices when he thought his interfer- 
ence necessary, than General Fry's statement of the above- 
described interview. 

The President, the army, and the country were most 
fortunate in having Mr. Stanton as Secretary of War dur- 
ing the rebellion. His staunch loyalty, his cold indifference 
to personal entreaties, his untiring energy and the devotion 
of his great ability to his work, made him the greatest of 
war ministers. Mr, Lincoln recognized this then, as the 
world has done since, and admirers and defamers now unite 
in regretting that an untimely death, caused by overwork 
during the war, prevented this public servant from enjoying 
the fruits of his promotion to the Supreme Bench, for which 
his early training, intellectual ability and inclinations so 
admirably fitted him. 

In this matter of recruiting, Mr. Stanton sent one of his 
officers privately to Rock Island to watch what was going 
on. When the men were mustered in and each had re- 
ceived his $iOO bounty, Captain Rathburn made known 
the fact that he came there by the direction of the Secretary 
of War, himself believing the undertaking was an unwise 
measure. He said he had changed his mind in the prem- 



19 

ises, and would be glad, upon his return to Washington, to 
be introduced to the President, so as to assure him of the 
success of the enterprise. 

The introduction was arranged for, and it was this Cap- 
tain Rathburn that subsequently married the daughter of 
United States Senator Harris, of New York, who were both 
in the private box with President and Mrs. Lincoln the 
night of the assassination of the President, from the shock 
of which tragedy he became a maniac a few years later. 

The eighteen hundred soldiers enlisted as above described 
were formed into two regiments, which did excellent service 
until the end of the war. Not a man ever deserted, and all 
proved loyal in their new allegiance. From other prisons, 
other men were subsequently enlisted, making in all fifty- 
seven hundred and thirty-eight reconstructed rebels who 
served under the old flag before the close of the war. 

The next time 1 met Mr. Lincoln was early on the 
morning of April 7th, 1865, in the log cabin now standing 
in F'airmount Park. Philadelphia, and then known as 
" Grant's Headquarters at City Point." I was in search of 
a pass to get through the lines to the army, to see my 
brother, and, I hoped, to witness the last fight of the Army 
ot the Potomac. As I entered the room, a voice from be- 
hind the open door called my name, and as I turned, Mr. 
Lincoln rose from a desk and pleasantly made a few in- 
quiries about myself. He then said, " Oh ! let me give you 
the latest news," and picking up a paper which lay on his 
table, he read to me Sheridan's telegram to General Grant, 
repeated word for word by the latter to the President, in 
which the capture of seven thousand men and five generals, 
including Ewell and Custis Lee, was reported. This was the 
famous dispatch in which Sheridan said that if the thing 
was pushed, he thought Lee would surrender, to which Mr. 
Lincoln, in his characteristic style, laconically replied, " Let 
the thing be pushed." 

Mr. Lincoln was, of course, intensely delighted with 



20 



the success of the Army of the Potomac in hemming in 
Lee's army, and, rubbing his hands together in his satisfac- 
tion, said, " The end has almost come." So it proved, 
but not as he meant, for a few days later, on April i6th, the 
down-boat on the Potomac passed us, bearing the direful 
placard, — 



"LINCOLN 

ASSASSINATED LAST NIGHT.' 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




